Page 98 - Design for Six Sigma a Roadmap for Product Development

Product Development Process and Design for Six Sigma 73

■ Accomplishing high product value and quality and low product cost
by using the most appropriate technology and design
■ Effectively transforming the voice of the customer to high-quality
design with high speed and low cost
■ Relentlessly decreasing the wastes in the product development
process

Based on the above definition, we can see the difference between
lean manufacturing and lean product development quite easily. While
lean manufacturing focuses on reducing the waste and increasing the
speed, the lean product development process focuses on both increas-
ing the product value and reducing waste and increasing speed.
Unlike the seven wastes in the manufacturing process, there are no
universally agreed upon waste categories for the product development.
However, we can easily list the following waste categories for the prod-
uct development process:
1. Wasted sale opportunities due to poor product value. The following
items are included in this waste category:
■ Inability to capture right voice of the customer (VOC) information
■ Inability to translate VOC into appropriate design
■ Poor choice of technologies
■ Poor innovation capabilities
■ Failure to integrate innovation with VOC
■ Poor quality, reliability, and robustness in designed product

For this category of waste, Design for Six Sigma can help greatly in
capturing high product value and developing products with high qual-
ity, high reliability, and robustness.
2. Waste in manpower, resources, and time. The following items are
included in this waste category:
■ Waste of workforce and resources in nonvalue-added activities.
■ Overburden on the people or resources: Excessive workload and
unrealistic deadline often lead to half-baked projects and bug-
ridden designs; eventually it will lead to rework.
■ Unproductive meetings: Meeting consumes engineering-hours.
Lean task management approach can effectively deal with this cate-
gory of waste.
3. Waste in knowledge and information. The following items are
included in this waste category:
■ Reinvention: If someone else has already done this work, rein-
vention certainly is a waste of workforce and resources.
■ Mismatch of subsystems: Many design rework problems happen
in the unexpected subsystem interactions.